Nutcracker Tickets - Nutcracker Theatre Tickets, Dates and Schedule

Category: Theatre

The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky's adaptation of the story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by E. T. A. Hoffmann was commissioned by the director of the Imperial Theatres Ivan Vsevolozhsky in 1891. The original production was staged by Marius Petipa on 18 December 1892, premiering on a double-bill with a now semi-forgotten Tchaikovsky opera, Iolanta.

The plot of Hoffmann's original story is much more complex than that of the ballet, in which events had to be considerably simplified; Hoffmann's tale contains a long flashback story within its plot entitled The Tale of the Hard Nut, explaining how and why the Prince was turned into the Nutcracker. In Hoffmann's original version, the heroine Marie's adventures with the toys and with the Nutcracker are not a dream, and the Nutcracker does not turn into a Prince after his battle with the Mouse King, but at the end of the story - after Marie tells the now inanimate Nutcracker that she would love him even if he remained ugly forever. A year and a day after she declares this, the Prince returns to Marie and asks her to marry him. She accepts, and goes back to reign with him in the Doll Kingdom.

In Western countries, The Nutcracker has become perhaps the most popular of all ballets, performed primarily during the Christmas season. In the United States, especially since the 1960s, it has transcended its origins as a mere ballet or piece of classical music, becoming a part of American tradition almost as much as the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Countless cities across the U.S. now stage the ballet at Christmas time, and new telecasts, video versions and interpretations of the ballet now appear even more often than before. There are several versions of the ballet now on DVD that have never been telecast in the U.S. Its music, especially the music of the suite derived from the ballet, has become familiar to millions all over the world. And because of the ballet's fame, Hoffmann's original story on which it is based has also become well known, and has been made into an animated feature film several times.

Tchaikovsky made a selection of eight of the numbers from the ballet before the ballet's December 1892 premiere, forming The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a, intended for concert performance. The suite was first performed, under the composer's direction, on 19 March 1892 at an assembly of the St. Petersburg branch of the Musical Society. The suite became instantly popular (according to Men of Music "every number had to be repeated"), but the complete ballet did not begin to achieve its great popularity until after the George Balanchine staging became a hit in New York City.

Among other things, the score of The Nutcracker is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had already employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda (premiered 1891). Although well-known in The Nutcracker as the featured solo instrument in the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Act II, it is employed elsewhere in the same act.

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